So Isabel has been having a night-time only cough which started a few days after we noticed the weird finger rash (so within the first few days of February the cough started). Recently the cough has led to her throwing up...as in she's coughed so much that it turns into gagging and throwing up, usually alot of mucus. However, she hasn't had a cold or sinus infection and it's certainly not a flu or stomach virus.
Monday, 2/21 I took her to the pediatrician who said that it "looks like" an allergy, although we just had her tested for 56 different allergies last week and they all came back negative except for black and brown mold. She said that asthma does not seem likely, since she does not cough or wheeze after running around playing. We were given some Singu.lair samples to try and the first night she tried it, absolutely NO coughing! Doc was completely puzzled.
However today, Tuesday, 2/22, she wound up coughing during the day, which led to throwing up during the daytime! Then another bout of coughing led to tears, a sore throat, and more throwing up in the night. So much for the Singu.lair!! After it failed to work tonight, it was thrown up....I guess that's what it deserves.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Circus, valentines and Greensboro
The second week of February we had alot going on!
We were busy finishing up valentines to put in the mail to relatives and for our Valentine's Day party. For valentines this year, we cut out hearts on white cardstock, and Isabel did the marble art (rolling a paint covered marble over the top of the hearts) as the decoration. We let them dry, then glued them to construction paper (note: use cardstock, not construction paper in the future!), then I wrote out "Happy Valentine's Day" and Isabel wrote her name.
We made edible heart bracelets that turned out pretty cute! I got the idea from this blog! So clever!
On Tuesday, 2/8 we babysat for a neighbor (which was really more of a playdate for Isabel!) :) then headed off to Greensboro to visit her friends who had moved from the neighborhood. Isabel had a really good time and talked the entire drive home about how much she missed Hailee and Hannah and wondered when they could come visit her.
Wednesday 2/9 we had tickets to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey circus at the RBC Center. I really didn't know what to expect since I had not been to a circus myself since I was a little girl! My memories of it were very vague, and I hoped that we would not be bored by a bunch of clown acts. Boy, I had no idea it would be so amazing! I mean, Rob and I both were very impressed! And when the show started, Isabel's face was just in awe. She could not look away from the show, but took my hand and pointed with her other hand at everything that was going on. Our only (slight) disappointment was that this circus did not have lions performing. They did have tigers, and Iz loved them, but she was really hoping for lions.
So Wednesday's school day revolved all around the circus! We thought of all the circus-related words we could come up with and listed them on the chalkboard. She wrote out lion, tiger, elephant and clown... and not by tracing the words! This time I decided to give her lined paper and wrote out the word, and she copied it below, and I was really amazed at how well she did it! I thought the words would be all over the place on the page, but she did a good job of keeping them within the lines! So I think letter tracing may be a thing of the past for her! Time to move on to bigger and better things ;)
I taped down a piece of string, gave her a swiffer duster sans the duster part (as a balancing stick) and let her "walk a tightrope"...she thought this was just fantastic and did it over and over again, even including some of her animals. I was so glad we did this activity, because when we went to the circus that night, she watched the tightrope walkers in amazement!
We decorated paper plates with REAL makeup as clown faces. I think Isabel was a little shocked that we used real makeup, but she did not complain! We added yarn for hair and a pointed hat, and they turned out pretty good!
That morning we made lion muffins using blueberry muffins, peanut butter frosting, corn pops for the mane and black icing for the eyes, nose and mouth. They turned out very cute! I almost didn't want to eat them!
We were busy finishing up valentines to put in the mail to relatives and for our Valentine's Day party. For valentines this year, we cut out hearts on white cardstock, and Isabel did the marble art (rolling a paint covered marble over the top of the hearts) as the decoration. We let them dry, then glued them to construction paper (note: use cardstock, not construction paper in the future!), then I wrote out "Happy Valentine's Day" and Isabel wrote her name.
We made edible heart bracelets that turned out pretty cute! I got the idea from this blog! So clever!
On Tuesday, 2/8 we babysat for a neighbor (which was really more of a playdate for Isabel!) :) then headed off to Greensboro to visit her friends who had moved from the neighborhood. Isabel had a really good time and talked the entire drive home about how much she missed Hailee and Hannah and wondered when they could come visit her.
Wednesday 2/9 we had tickets to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey circus at the RBC Center. I really didn't know what to expect since I had not been to a circus myself since I was a little girl! My memories of it were very vague, and I hoped that we would not be bored by a bunch of clown acts. Boy, I had no idea it would be so amazing! I mean, Rob and I both were very impressed! And when the show started, Isabel's face was just in awe. She could not look away from the show, but took my hand and pointed with her other hand at everything that was going on. Our only (slight) disappointment was that this circus did not have lions performing. They did have tigers, and Iz loved them, but she was really hoping for lions.
So Wednesday's school day revolved all around the circus! We thought of all the circus-related words we could come up with and listed them on the chalkboard. She wrote out lion, tiger, elephant and clown... and not by tracing the words! This time I decided to give her lined paper and wrote out the word, and she copied it below, and I was really amazed at how well she did it! I thought the words would be all over the place on the page, but she did a good job of keeping them within the lines! So I think letter tracing may be a thing of the past for her! Time to move on to bigger and better things ;)
I taped down a piece of string, gave her a swiffer duster sans the duster part (as a balancing stick) and let her "walk a tightrope"...she thought this was just fantastic and did it over and over again, even including some of her animals. I was so glad we did this activity, because when we went to the circus that night, she watched the tightrope walkers in amazement!
We decorated paper plates with REAL makeup as clown faces. I think Isabel was a little shocked that we used real makeup, but she did not complain! We added yarn for hair and a pointed hat, and they turned out pretty good!
That morning we made lion muffins using blueberry muffins, peanut butter frosting, corn pops for the mane and black icing for the eyes, nose and mouth. They turned out very cute! I almost didn't want to eat them!
The Rash and other issues.
On Sunday, January 30th, we were sitting in church when I happened to look down and notice Isabel's left pointer finger. I was completely horrified. Out of nowhere there had developed a bumpy, red, irritated looking area which on first impression reminded me of poison ivy. I was so upset by it, I could hardly focus on the rest of Mass.
After inspecting it, it doesn't itch or hurt, and it is only on this one finger, from the fingertip to almost halfway down the finger. That's it. So I decided to just watch it since it wasn't bothering her. We put AandD ointment on it, but that seemed to make it worse instead of better.
13 days later, it seems to be "healing", but it is very slow to try to clear up...we have switched to Aquaphor at night, and that is helping MUCH more than the A&D.
So, based on the weird rash (which after googling it, dyshidrotic eczema is the closest thing I can come up with), and after realizing that she was starting to go stagnant on her growth chart as far as weight, not to mention the itchy face, and newly developed "night cough", I decided we should take her to have food allergy testing done.
Bless her heart, this was her back on Wednesday:
And while I was praying that we would find some sort of answer to any of the strange symptoms she's been having, it turns out she has zero food allergies, but does have a mild allergy to both black and brown mold. Well, it's doubtful mold is causing her issues....so we've reached another dead end.
She was a champ through the pokes of the testing and her reward was princess lip gloss! So now we will be adding her high calorie supplements back into her daily milkshakes (which we had simply reduced to pediasure)...which means it will be a combo of pediasure, scandishake and duocal. (Ahhh...Mommy sees lots of dollar signs again)!
After inspecting it, it doesn't itch or hurt, and it is only on this one finger, from the fingertip to almost halfway down the finger. That's it. So I decided to just watch it since it wasn't bothering her. We put AandD ointment on it, but that seemed to make it worse instead of better.
13 days later, it seems to be "healing", but it is very slow to try to clear up...we have switched to Aquaphor at night, and that is helping MUCH more than the A&D.
So, based on the weird rash (which after googling it, dyshidrotic eczema is the closest thing I can come up with), and after realizing that she was starting to go stagnant on her growth chart as far as weight, not to mention the itchy face, and newly developed "night cough", I decided we should take her to have food allergy testing done.
Bless her heart, this was her back on Wednesday:
And while I was praying that we would find some sort of answer to any of the strange symptoms she's been having, it turns out she has zero food allergies, but does have a mild allergy to both black and brown mold. Well, it's doubtful mold is causing her issues....so we've reached another dead end.
She was a champ through the pokes of the testing and her reward was princess lip gloss! So now we will be adding her high calorie supplements back into her daily milkshakes (which we had simply reduced to pediasure)...which means it will be a combo of pediasure, scandishake and duocal. (Ahhh...Mommy sees lots of dollar signs again)!
Thursday, February 17, 2011
First week of February 2011
Here are some of the things Iz did this week:
Last ballet class (for awhile) *sniff sniff*
Visit with Ms. Yuwie and her 4 week old daughter, Samantha! This was soooo wonderful, especially for me since we are getting close to having our own newborn in the house soon. Isabel was quite a bit less interested than I thought she would be.
For school work we reviewed her sound book, practiced tracing and writing some "trouble letters": s, u, v, w, x, y; she traced and colored hearts in preparation for Valentine's Day, heart cutting practice (I loved seeing the improvement in her cutting skills over the last year!).
She helped make a heart garland for our Valentine's Day party:
We tried to grow grass in the shape of a heart, but it did not work! Very disappointing (we watched it for 2 weeks and it did nothing!) But here is a picture of her sprinkling grass seeds on the heart shaped sponge:
For an art project, we made homemade puffy paint using glue, paint and shaving cream....the result was a soft foam texture which worked nicely for painting and dried soft and fluffy! However, if you touched it too much after it dried, it would begin to flake off.
We made Valentine snowflake decorations for our upcoming V-day party.
She colored and named letters A-F flashcards....this is really more like a review since she knows the names and sounds of all the letters, but it is the first step in the reading program we are beginning, so extra review can't hurt!
I printed out a blank calendar with 31 numbers and she placed them all on the calendar in order...it was a fun and different way to practice ordering numbers.
She and I both did this project from Catholic Icing. "This little light of mine" craft tied into last week's lesson on being a clear and bright image of God by making right choices....she loved having her own little tea light (battery operated) candle. And of course we just had to sing "This little light of mine" a few dozen times too :)
Finally to end the week, we attended the Children's Holy Hour at St. Joseph church on Friday morning, since it was the First Friday of February, and it was WONDERFUL! I have never been to a children's holy hour so I wasn't sure what to expect, but really thought that it would be mostly children and noisy, and they'd probably turn on a kid's cd of worship songs in the background. Wrong. The church's monsignor led the kids through an entire hour of worship, directing everything to their level...he brought them up around the altar and they all knelt in front of the Blessed Sacrament and said a decade of the rosary....he talked about why they use incense and how it reminds us of our prayers lifting up to God. He pointed out an angel statue with it's arms stretched out towards Jesus and just explained all sorts of different imagery that many Catholic churches use (statues, paintings, crosses) to direct our attention towards God! I loved him! And Isabel was delighted to be so included. Oh and did I mention it was almost all homeschooling families?? Yeah! I got to meet several new faces :)
That night we celebrated Grandpa H's birthday by taking him out to Olive Garden for dinner :) The following morning, Isabel got to attend a friend's birthday party at the science museum downtown with Daddy. She got to dig for fossils, break a toy dinosaur out of some "rock" and other dino related activities. Rob said she had a blast!
Last ballet class (for awhile) *sniff sniff*
Visit with Ms. Yuwie and her 4 week old daughter, Samantha! This was soooo wonderful, especially for me since we are getting close to having our own newborn in the house soon. Isabel was quite a bit less interested than I thought she would be.
For school work we reviewed her sound book, practiced tracing and writing some "trouble letters": s, u, v, w, x, y; she traced and colored hearts in preparation for Valentine's Day, heart cutting practice (I loved seeing the improvement in her cutting skills over the last year!).
She helped make a heart garland for our Valentine's Day party:
We tried to grow grass in the shape of a heart, but it did not work! Very disappointing (we watched it for 2 weeks and it did nothing!) But here is a picture of her sprinkling grass seeds on the heart shaped sponge:
For an art project, we made homemade puffy paint using glue, paint and shaving cream....the result was a soft foam texture which worked nicely for painting and dried soft and fluffy! However, if you touched it too much after it dried, it would begin to flake off.
We made Valentine snowflake decorations for our upcoming V-day party.
She colored and named letters A-F flashcards....this is really more like a review since she knows the names and sounds of all the letters, but it is the first step in the reading program we are beginning, so extra review can't hurt!
I printed out a blank calendar with 31 numbers and she placed them all on the calendar in order...it was a fun and different way to practice ordering numbers.
She and I both did this project from Catholic Icing. "This little light of mine" craft tied into last week's lesson on being a clear and bright image of God by making right choices....she loved having her own little tea light (battery operated) candle. And of course we just had to sing "This little light of mine" a few dozen times too :)
Finally to end the week, we attended the Children's Holy Hour at St. Joseph church on Friday morning, since it was the First Friday of February, and it was WONDERFUL! I have never been to a children's holy hour so I wasn't sure what to expect, but really thought that it would be mostly children and noisy, and they'd probably turn on a kid's cd of worship songs in the background. Wrong. The church's monsignor led the kids through an entire hour of worship, directing everything to their level...he brought them up around the altar and they all knelt in front of the Blessed Sacrament and said a decade of the rosary....he talked about why they use incense and how it reminds us of our prayers lifting up to God. He pointed out an angel statue with it's arms stretched out towards Jesus and just explained all sorts of different imagery that many Catholic churches use (statues, paintings, crosses) to direct our attention towards God! I loved him! And Isabel was delighted to be so included. Oh and did I mention it was almost all homeschooling families?? Yeah! I got to meet several new faces :)
That night we celebrated Grandpa H's birthday by taking him out to Olive Garden for dinner :) The following morning, Isabel got to attend a friend's birthday party at the science museum downtown with Daddy. She got to dig for fossils, break a toy dinosaur out of some "rock" and other dino related activities. Rob said she had a blast!
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Coins Week!
This week I had planned for her to attend our first homeschool field trip with ARCH to Marbles Children's Museum to attend a Dollars & Sense presentation. So I figured we had better at least learn our coins! She has played with coins before, but it's been a long time since we reviewed their names, much less their value.
This was my plan for teaching money:
1. Identify the coins by: hands-on exploration, coloring a picture of each, discuss the color, size, etc. of each, sort them, and make a mini coin book using coin rubbings and tracing their names.
2. Learn the value of coins: okay, we are not there yet! ;)
Here is what we DID do:
I put out a basket containing the four main U.S. coins: penny, nickel, dime and quarter in order of their value, and with a magnifying glass to examine them. We looked at them together and I asked her to describe their characteristics. We noted they had different faces, different pictures on the back, she was very interested in finding the different dates, different color, size, etc.
She completed a coin worksheet which she colored and we named the coins...for this she matched up the actual coin to the picture.
The following day we did coin name traceables and these three part cards I made for the four coins. I was really bummed that I neglected to notice that the font I used to make these was very confusing when it got to "p" and q"....argh! That made it a little harder for her and I could tell she got a little frustrated when the "q" didn't look like the one she was used to seeing!
We completed penny counting: 11-20 (object to number correspondence).
She graphed a bag of coins I gave her, by using some homemade coin stampers. (Sadly these stampers did not give any detail regardless of whether I used an inkpad or paint)...but she had a different color for each coin, and they were different sizes since they were real coins.
On Friday we went to the Dollars & Sense class where they discussed where money comes from, where people keep money, wants vs. needs, and goods vs. services. I was surprised that even though it was geared to Kindergarten through Third Grade, she was able to come home with quite a bit of info that she understood to a degree! Funny side story: the day prior, we were shopping in Target and I was explaining "wants" and "needs" to her, and I thought she was understanding until she looked me in the eye on the toy aisle and said, "But Mommy I neeeeeeed this doll." LOL! Anyway, she got to volunteer at the Dollars & Sense presentation and she was so proud of herself. Afterward we played in the museum for a few hours before heading home.
Other activities this week included: ballet class, tracing practice (her trouble letters) p, q, r, s, t (s and t are soo much better this week!), reviewed sound book, reviewed the blended sounds from last week and played a matching game, dry erase numbers 1-10, library storytime, birthday dinner for a neighborhood friend, Who Am I? Faith lesson on sin and wrong choices...I enjoyed this lesson, because I took a hand mirror and dusted it with baby powder...we talked about how we are made in God's image, but it's hard to be a clear image of God when we sin...just like when we try to see our image in the dirty mirror...we don't see it very clearly. Asking for forgiveness from God cleans off our "mirror", and Iz loved spraying windex on the mirror and wiping it clean!
Finally to end our week we attended Christian Youth Theater's performance of Cinderella last night. It lasted from 7:30pm to about 10pm!!! Woah...and even though we got there at about 7pm, Rob and I had to sit separately (with Isabel on my lap!!) because it was just packed! She enjoyed it though and I really loved the spiritual twist that was put on the classic tail! AND, the place was packed with homeschoolers! Very exciting for us! The atmosphere was just awesome in terms of friendly people (we didn't even get any groans when Iz and my pregnant belly had to crawl over about 7 people to get to the one seat in the middle of the row that was vacant!) We will definitely be attending their performances in the future....just making sure to arrive much earlier!
This was my plan for teaching money:
1. Identify the coins by: hands-on exploration, coloring a picture of each, discuss the color, size, etc. of each, sort them, and make a mini coin book using coin rubbings and tracing their names.
2. Learn the value of coins: okay, we are not there yet! ;)
Here is what we DID do:
I put out a basket containing the four main U.S. coins: penny, nickel, dime and quarter in order of their value, and with a magnifying glass to examine them. We looked at them together and I asked her to describe their characteristics. We noted they had different faces, different pictures on the back, she was very interested in finding the different dates, different color, size, etc.
She completed a coin worksheet which she colored and we named the coins...for this she matched up the actual coin to the picture.
The following day we did coin name traceables and these three part cards I made for the four coins. I was really bummed that I neglected to notice that the font I used to make these was very confusing when it got to "p" and q"....argh! That made it a little harder for her and I could tell she got a little frustrated when the "q" didn't look like the one she was used to seeing!
We completed penny counting: 11-20 (object to number correspondence).
She graphed a bag of coins I gave her, by using some homemade coin stampers. (Sadly these stampers did not give any detail regardless of whether I used an inkpad or paint)...but she had a different color for each coin, and they were different sizes since they were real coins.
On Friday we went to the Dollars & Sense class where they discussed where money comes from, where people keep money, wants vs. needs, and goods vs. services. I was surprised that even though it was geared to Kindergarten through Third Grade, she was able to come home with quite a bit of info that she understood to a degree! Funny side story: the day prior, we were shopping in Target and I was explaining "wants" and "needs" to her, and I thought she was understanding until she looked me in the eye on the toy aisle and said, "But Mommy I neeeeeeed this doll." LOL! Anyway, she got to volunteer at the Dollars & Sense presentation and she was so proud of herself. Afterward we played in the museum for a few hours before heading home.
Other activities this week included: ballet class, tracing practice (her trouble letters) p, q, r, s, t (s and t are soo much better this week!), reviewed sound book, reviewed the blended sounds from last week and played a matching game, dry erase numbers 1-10, library storytime, birthday dinner for a neighborhood friend, Who Am I? Faith lesson on sin and wrong choices...I enjoyed this lesson, because I took a hand mirror and dusted it with baby powder...we talked about how we are made in God's image, but it's hard to be a clear image of God when we sin...just like when we try to see our image in the dirty mirror...we don't see it very clearly. Asking for forgiveness from God cleans off our "mirror", and Iz loved spraying windex on the mirror and wiping it clean!
Finally to end our week we attended Christian Youth Theater's performance of Cinderella last night. It lasted from 7:30pm to about 10pm!!! Woah...and even though we got there at about 7pm, Rob and I had to sit separately (with Isabel on my lap!!) because it was just packed! She enjoyed it though and I really loved the spiritual twist that was put on the classic tail! AND, the place was packed with homeschoolers! Very exciting for us! The atmosphere was just awesome in terms of friendly people (we didn't even get any groans when Iz and my pregnant belly had to crawl over about 7 people to get to the one seat in the middle of the row that was vacant!) We will definitely be attending their performances in the future....just making sure to arrive much earlier!
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